multilingualism

Original

Breaking Down Language Barriers to Reduce Information Privilege in Scholarly Communication

For decades, English has been a lingua franca in the research community, where it has become the principal language for publishing and conferences. But when one main language is used to share information, knowledge of this language is also needed to access information. In this way, English has become linked to information privilege: people who have mastered English can access scholarly information more easily than people who are less comfortable in this language. This has ripple effects, influencing the extent to which scientists can participate fully in scholarly communication. While the problems are clear, the solutions are trickier.

Read More
Translation

Multilingual Scholarly Communication and Translation Technologies

While a multilingual scholarly communication ecosystem would help to mitigate many of the inequities created by the single-language model that currently prevails, multilingualism nonetheless presents its own challenges. If researchers all publish in their own language, how will they be able to discover and access each other’s work? Can new AI-based translation technologies help?

Read More